There is a wide variety of scientific operations in which biological or chemical sampling, measuring and analyzing are performed. Many of these procedures rely on the use of expensive and/or bulky equipment. Low-cost and portable methods can be desirable if accurate results can be obtained.
An example of such operations is PCR (polymerase chain reaction). PCR is a technique used in molecular biology to amplify a portion of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) or RNA (after reverse transcription to DNA). In a PCR reaction, the enzyme DNA polymerase generates copies of a target sequence in an exponential fashion. Primers are used to amplify specific sequences and nucleotides are added as material which is assembled by polymerase to make DNA copies.